Contenis, as in happy, excited, overjoyed, in good spirits, and a host of other positive-feeling adjectives.     If you’ve ever heard a Mexican say this word and wondered what he or she was talking about, you should know this variation on the Spanish utterance for happy is just that.  Another way to express a feeling of joy!

Not anything relating to tennis shoes, unless we are excited about a new pair of sneakers and use it to express how contenis we are.  For Example:

Q:  ­¿Que onda guey?   What’s up dude?

A:  Aqui nomas.   Just here.  

Q:  ¿Como andas?   How are you?

A:  ¡Contenis!   Happy!

My favorite morning radio deejay uses this word all the time, in so many different ways, that it has just become one of my favorite Mexican Spanish slang words.  It’s very flexible, can be uttered in various intonations, can be applied to virtually any friendly exchange, and is just more fun to say than contento, feliz, agradable, satisfecho,etc.  Yet if you look it up in the dictionary of the Real Academia Española (the worldwide leading authority on the Spanish language) there is no definition for contenis.

Still contenis makes me happy!  How do you use this expression?